Page 54 - Purchasing Power Black Kids and American Consumer Culture

The Shadow of Whiteness . 39

the privilege of earning money in their spare time. Skilled artisans were
especially apt to be able to hire themselves out independently, and male
bondsmen had the added advantage of being generally more free to move
among local farms and plantations. Women could find ways to earn
money, and Harriet Jacobs's grandmother (known as Aunt Marthy) was
given permission to bake and put up preserves at night after her regular
work was done "provided she would clothe herself and her children
from the profits" (Jacobs 1988, 12). In effect, Aunt Marthy had to pay
her owners for the privilege of undertaking paid labor. Those who chose
to work or sell things on the side without permission risked being pun-
ished for "stealing" their own labor, thereby cheating their masters,
much as current welfare recipients are "cheating" taxpayers when they
engage in otherwise legal income-generating activities like babysitting or
doing hair. Despite ample data showing that much welfare compensation
simply does not provide adequate income to pay for even basic necessi-
ties, the income-generating strategies to which many welfare recipients
turn are deemed illegal—even if they would in any other context be un-
exceptionable (Hill and Stephens 1997). Kathryn Edin (1991) further
documents how, like slaveowners before them, individual welfare case-
workers overlook, or not, at their discretion or whim, transgressions of
the rules and regulations over both consumption and income generation.
In myriad ways both overt and subtle, the maintenance of the gap be-
tween slave and slaveholder depended on visible differences in consump-
tion. These differences were more easily maintained when slaves' access
to money and commodities was limited. In public settings, clothing was a
crucial marker of status, not just in terms of social standing, but racially
as well. Slaveholders also supplied their human chattel with clothing once
or twice a year, often distributed at Christmastime. Clothing intended for
slaves was rarely, if ever, bought manufactured, though it was common to
cut and sew clothing from industrially produced cloth imported from
England (Fox-Genovese 1988,128). Slave dress, not surprisingly, offered
little in the way of style, variety, or choice. "How I hated it! It was one of
the badges of slavery," exclaims Harriet Jacobs of the linsey-woolsey
dress she received each winter (Jacobs 1988, 19-20). In these circum-
stances, where slaveowners dictated the "fashions" acceptable for slaves
and enforced these decisions, a well-dressed slave was to some degree not
only an oxymoron but a joke among whites. The joke has been excep-
tionally long-lived, thriving not only in minstrel shows, but in contempo-
rary films and television, from the extravagantly hatted and furred pimps
of the 1970s to the equally decked-out players of the 1990s.